


Oliver Queen: On The Hole In His Heart

by Teland



Series: DCU Meta [12]
Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alcohol, Backstory, Character Analysis, Drug Abuse, F/M, Families of Choice, Family, Headcanon, Insecurity, M/M, Metafiction, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-17
Updated: 2014-07-17
Packaged: 2018-02-16 23:22:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2288372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teland/pseuds/Teland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Te burbles about Ollie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oliver Queen: On The Hole In His Heart

**Author's Note:**

> bossymarmalade asked: Te, not that I am complaining or anything b/c I am a HUGE fan of GA, but my god I didn't think anybody would choose Green Arrow over Nightwing in that meme! Colour me delighted. And also hoping you'll elaborate on the why (b/c I love to hear people talk about why they like Ollie, heh).

Well, to be honest, I would choose everybody? I mean, I *am* a giant whore for the DCU. *laughs* WE KNEW THIS ALREADY.

But people like Melissa and Mildred have SHOWN ME THE GREEN AND DOOFUSY LIGHT THAT IS (comics) OLLIE.

I mean, he’s canonically this Poor Little Rich Boy who, like, does everything short of actively *trying* to not live up to his potential. He squanders his education, parties, fucks his way through the world, fails right and left, and, despite being brilliant, athletic, handsome, well-spoken, and just generally Set To Succeed in the world his ancestors’ built (and raped and pillaged) for him, he is the Biggest of Disappointments.

And when his father dies (mother? No one has a mother in the DCU. Don’t be silly), he lets Ollie know it. Whether or not he actually says “I love you, but you’re worthless”, he makes sure Ollie *knows* it, and this is the canker at the heart of him, the rot in the rose.

It stays there forever.

It’s part of what lets him survive the island, what lets him pick himself up and *survive* so that he doesn’t *die* a dissolute failure, and it’s part of what pushes him and pushes him and *pushes* him until he can damned well make himself SOMETHING —

And it’s even what allows him to *not* just turn himself into a clone of his father. Because he knows, deep down, that while his father *wanted* him to follow in his footsteps, he would’ve *respected* Ollie striking out on his own — so long as he could back up his beliefs and plans and ambitions with real thought and passion and research.

But here’s the thing — the hole never actually gets filled.

When he takes himself out as Green Arrow early — probably in the early 80s (did I mention having a [timeline](http://teland.dreamwidth.org/671900.html) over here? 'cause I do.), and, yeah, probably *before* Batman and Superman are really doing their thing — and winds up killing someone by accident?

Everything just gets so much worse. So. Much. Worse.

He almost gives up entirely, and he starts drinking again — smoking weed makes him laugh, and he can’t stand the sound of that — and he’s ready to just throw himself down a hole and stay there.

But — somehow — he picks himself up again. Enough — just enough — to get himself to A Certain Ashram (probably with some help…), and get his head on straight again.

He gains a measure of peace, and, I believe, a measure of balance.

He learns the concept of Good Enough.

He doesn’t even come *close* to becoming a Buddhist, but he reaches something like a philosophy: He has to do his best, and give his best, and *be* his best, and he has to *accept* that his best will not always be enough. If he doesn’t do the last thing, then he will not be able to do *any* of the first things, and *every*thing will fall apart.

He pastes that up around the hole inside him and keeps going, keeps training, makes himself as good as he can — and *accepts* that he’ll *always* be training.

At the same time? He opens himself to who he is. Who he thinks he is.

He parties. He laughs. He macks on the ladies — especially the ones who are either ~*Liberated*~ (as he sees it, natch) or who can be talked into *becoming* ~*Liberated*~. Feminism is important to him. *Liberalism* is important to him. Oliver Queen has a lot of charities run through Queen Industries, but even though he intellectually understands that they do good work — more than *he* can do as one man on his own — it’s a lot more satisfying when he can argue the night down in a bar with some guy who never thought to question his racist attitudes before the weird blond drunk in the domino showed up and started buying pitchers and laying his rap down.

Ollie sometimes thinks he was born in the wrong decade.

Ollie is, actually, smart enough to know that if he’d had to live in a *more* prejudiced world than the one he already does live in, he’d fall apart — or, infinitely worse, be *ignorant*.

Ollie isn’t always aware of how ignorant he *is*.

There are legions of women of color who wake up facepalming because they can’t *believe* they actually fucked that white boy who kept trying to raise *their* consciousness and would not shut up about the beauty of natural *hair*. Or the importance of holding on to their ‘native’ cultures. Or languages. Or —

You get the point.

But —

He means well. He *always* means well, and he will fight injustice *everywhere*. And if he can’t see it? All you have to do is point it out to him, and he’ll *start* fighting it, arrows flying and beard bristling.

Because of the hole in him *and* because, at base, he’s a beautiful, loving man who wants people not to *hurt*. Who understands a *lot* about how soft and easy his life was — and how much he took it for granted — and how many people have *nothing* soft *or* easy.

And then he meets Hal… and things get a little bigger, and a lot stranger, and seriously *deeper*. Because here is this willing establishment *tool*, here is this ignorant *fuck*, here is this *idiot* —

And he’s also a hero, and he *also* means well, and he’s whip-smart, and creative, and useful, and he’s got a backbone like nobody’s *business*, and —

And maybe. Maybe.

But really *definitely*, because there are massive father-shaped holes in Hal, too, and, in the end, neither of them have — at that point in their lives — *anyone* they can speak with about the deepest parts of their souls, even assuming they *do* get drunk enough to do that —

And they do —

Certainly they *want* to —

So fighting turns to snarking turns to drinking turns to good-natured argument turns to *joined at the hip*.

Because Ollie is *nothing* Hal has ever seen before, and Ollie treats Hal like a friend, a person, someone with worthwhile opinions — worthy enough to be *argued* with, instead of dismissed or held in contempt or just blown off in favor of some *easier* conversation. Ollie treats Hal like someone who can be *taught*.

And Hal treats Ollie like a partner, a friend, a companion on the road of life -- even when that road leads way the hell out to the far ends of the galaxy and beyond -- and, yeah, he listens, too, and they try to teach each other, to *reach* each other, and if there are things they talk about drunk — and stoned, and sometimes tripping, but never when the ring is fully-charged, because that shit’s dangerous — that they never touch on sober…

Hey, it’s not like there’s anything *wrong*.

And if Hal wants more from Ollie than friendship --

If Hal has, in fact, never known anyone or anything that has meant more to him than Ollie's companionship, Ollie's touch, Ollie's *scent* when they're in each other's faces and drunk and arguing *again*, loud and passionate and needy, please, he can't be the only one who's *needy* --

If both of them take advantage of the fact that neither of them ever try to make the other anyone or anything but what they are, even when they know they can be better, *should* be better, *need* to be better -- 

Especially because neither of them are capable of forming relationships with OTHER PEOPLE -- 

LA LA LA, that’s what.

Because, yeah, that hole in Ollie is still right there, and Hal fills it a *little* -- just like how Ollie does a few repairs on Hal's heart -- but it's only because they know they have each other until the end of the world -- and BEYOND -- no matter what godawful shit they pull when they're too fitshaced to know better. (Or when they can tell themselves they are...) 

And that’s not what anyone actually needs — not if they’re going to be a better person.

So by the time Dinah and Roy come along, Ollie's a man who’s loud, wild, brash. A human tidal wave, a force of nature, a *hurricane* of a man utterly determined to make the world a better place — and determined to do everything he can to avoid the hollow spaces inside him.

The ones which get very, very loud when he’s not either partying with Hal — and whichever groupies they can convince to join them — or, better yet, fighting crime with Hal —

Or, better yet, partying with Hal and several groupies *after* fighting crime for hours —

Or days —

Until all he can do is drop where he lands, uniform still mostly on, sweat dried salty behind his domino, beard smelling like woman, all the women in the world, never leave him —

And he doesn’t sleep so much as stop existing for a while.

Ollie doesn’t like to dream.

Before the island, the dreams were all about his failures, about the visions of himself in his father’s eyes, distorted and ugly, a failure.

On the island, the dreams were all about death, slow and thin and hollow, weak, emaciated, mocking.

Now —

Well, the nightmares are a lot more respectable, he thinks. Other people’s dead, other people’s wounds, other people’s tears — and none of them are his.

Except that all of them are his.

All of them are his *failures* —

And the walls he builds around the hollow spaces inside him crumble in the dark.

When he’s alone.

And sometimes when he’s not.

Not that he wants some kind of girlfriend — he’s not gonna tie some woman down, and *he’s* not ready to get tied down, and marriage is a joke, a lie, a chain around your neck!

Sometimes he clings to Dinah so hard when they’re making love — not when they’re fucking — that she can’t breathe.

He never opens his eyes then.

And Roy — well, if Ollie ever saw the way Bruce sometimes stares at Dick’s closed door —

Or sleeping body —

Or empty *bed* —

He’d understand too well, and it would make him bristle more, and need more, and hate himself more, and — god, fuck, do anything, *anything*, to make the kid know he loves him, *loves* him —

And it’s not that he doesn’t say it — he’s said it more to Roy than to anyone else, living or dead!

But Ollie knows, deep down, that Roy doesn’t really believe it.

Maybe because Ollie can’t quite look at him.

Because Ollie’s afraid to see —

So many things.

But he keeps it up, you know? Dinah and Roy love him madly — like Hal — but unlike Hal, they don’t let him get away with *everything*.

They push him — sometimes. When they can. As *much* as they can.

And, slowly, that hollow space *does* get filled in. Little by little. Piece by piece.

Until one day Ollie looks at himself in the mirror and sees, really *sees*, who he is. Who he’s been. What he’s done — to himself, as himself. To others. When he sees just how much is still missing inside him… and maybe, just maybe, decides to go “find himself”.

Or maybe America.

With Hal — the man who never pushes.

The man whose eyes he’s never afraid to meet.

The man he never feels the need to clutch — as opposed to lean on, nice and casual and easy, when they’re safely hammered. And maybe stoned, too.

And we know what happens there, yeah?

Roy feeling good and abandoned after the world’s most confusing adolescence — and yeah, I’m counting Dick’s too — and falling down. Hard.

Ollie coming back to see it — and falling down. Hard.

Because it was easier to NOPE his way out of dealing with his son -- the boy he’s loved practically since the first time he *saw* the kid laughing and shooting and *being* -- having an honest to God *problem* than it was to admit that he’d… fallen down.

That he’d fucked-up.

That the hole in him — the thing his father saw, and told him about, and *solidified* — had destroyed something beautiful.

And of course it’s simplistic and egotistical and *stupid* — we’re talking about Ollie! But… yeah.

Still, Dinah is a badass, and she steps in to help Roy, and the community is a community of *heroes*, and *they* step in to help, and Roy is *Roy*, and he never gives *up* when there’s *hope* —

And none of them ever give up on Ollie, either.

Who, for his part, is himself — and never truly gives up on Roy, either. A part of him believed, I think, that there would be someone to pick up the pieces he dropped everywhere — if only because Roy was just so beautiful and perfect and right, because Roy had made so *many* friends, made so many people love and need and *respect* him. People Ollie could never even begin to *understand* love Roy, love him like family -- like what family was always *supposed* to mean, even -- and -- 

And yeah. A part of Ollie was *counting* on that even while he was weeping into his beer at Hal’s place about having lost his son.

A part of Ollie was hoping — begging — for tomorrow.

And he got it.

But he still lost Roy, in a lot of ways.

Until Connor came along and — man. One of the things I love so much about Connor is that, for all that he’s Ollie’s opposite on the surface? When you *scratch* that surface, he’s a Queen to the bone.

Stubborn, passionate, determined, driven — Connor can be the sweetest, most serene, kindest, gentlest pain in the *ass* you’ve ever seen.

And he sweetly, serenely, kindly, and *gently* *beats* Ollie into being his father. And Roy’s father. And Mia’s father. (AND CISSIE’S FATHER DAMNIT.) And Dinah’s husband if she’s into that. And Hal’s brother. And so on. And so on. And SO ON.

Connor never *stops* pushing.

Connor *never* shrugs and says “eh, it’s Ollie.”

The overwhelming tidal wave of Ollie’s personality — eddies out to pathetic babbles and growls and bubbles of ire at Connor’s feet until Connor damned well gets his way.

And that’s *before* Mia and Cissie step in to back him up.

One day, Ollie learns to apologize.

Months after that, Ollie learns to say ‘I love you’ while looking someone dead in the eye.

Sometime after that, Ollie learns to look *himself* in the eye without flinching, even on the inside, because he’s learned that ‘good enough’ means one whole hell of a lot more when your best is good enough to make the people you love warm, and safe, and happy — and warm and safe and happy *with you*.

On that day, he puts Sly and the Family Stone on the hi-fi —

“Why do you still *own* that? *How* do you still own that?”

And Ollie claps Roy on the shoulder, callused hand strong and huge and hard as always -- but more *familiar*, now, than it is any of those other things. “Quality, my boy. You can’t put a time-stamp on quality.”

— and Roy snorts and shoves a pot brownie in his mouth —

That Clark had baked himself —

Connor made the space cake —

Mia brought a case of wine, because she’s feeling classy tonight —

Dinah brought a handle of Cuervo, because classy isn't in her vocabulary --

Cissie has booby-trapped her bottles of apple juice, just in case anyone gets ideas —

And Hal is there, part of everything, *introduced* to everyone as more than just Ollie’s friend, Ollie’s brother, Ollie’s *escape*. Hal knows he’s worth being pushed, too.

And you know, it’s not that Ollie grows into The Perfect Man.

He’s crazy, he’s shallow, he’s capable of going hours — days, WEEKS — at a time without thinking critically about his emotional life. This is his fundamental makeup.

But they’re all crazy, each in their own ways.

And they’re all heroes.

And Ollie —

Well, DC is DC not because they write about people fighting crime, but because they have a gift for iconography. Ollie Queen isn’t just Green Arrow, he’s this — this incredibly larger-than-life figure. The Late Hippie. The Angry Radical With His Pants Around His Ankles. The Drunken Satyr. The Cheerful Lout. The Loving Papa Bear. The Broken Manchild In The Promised Land. Robin Hood And His Not-At-All-Merry Man.

And more. And more. And MORE.

There’s so *much* to him!

Of course I love him. He, like so much of DC’s cast of bazillions, is large.

He contains multitudes.

And he wants to share them all with *you*.

… probably via his cock.

He’ll buy you all the drinks you want first, though. <3

end.


End file.
